The Second Slippery Slope
by RockSunner
Summary: In this AU story based on The Slippery Slope, the Baudelaires make a different decision about a certain pit trap. Warning: a tragic death.
1. Part 1

The Second Slippery Slope  
  
This AU fanfiction explores what would have happened if the Baudelaires and Quigley had trapped Esmé Squalor as they originally planned. It contains spoilers for The Slippery Slope and the Unauthorized Autobiography. Disclaimer: none of the characters belong to me.  
  
----------- Part 1  
  
All that night, while they were digging the deep dark pit, Violet, Klaus,and Quigley had had many qualms (which here means "guilty feeling about how villainous is to try to trap someone in a deep dark pit, even someone as wicked as Esmé Squalor"). If only the fire had not been so sooty, smudging out the motto of the V.F.D. on the library arch, they might have had second thoughts.  
  
"Maybe this is important," Klaus said, pointing up at the archway. All three looked up and read the two words that were still unsmudged underneath the large letters that spelled "V.F.D. Library."  
  
"Quiet here," Quigley read. "What do you think it means?"  
  
"It's probably just telling people to be quiet in the library," said Violet. "And now we'd better be quiet ourselves, or Esmé will hear us and not fall into our trap."  
  
And so, the three children failed to have second thoughts and therefore took a step onto a second slippery slope that changed their lives forever. When I say "slippery slope" in this case, I am not referring to a rocky surface covered in ice such as the one Esmé was sledding down to her fate, but to the principle that after doing one wrong thing it becomes easier to do a worse one, and then another worse still, and so on.  
  
For example, someone once told me that if I start writing theater criticism in order to pass messages to a secret society, the next thing I knew I would be writing secret messages in anthropomorphic treatises (which here means "long books about a wee little elf and his talking forest friends"), and after that I'd be hiding messages in stories about the miserable lives of children while running from the law.  
  
It was a fallacious (which here means "silly") argument, because each step doesn't necessarily lead to the next. But in my case the person was absolutely right.  
  
And likewise I am right when I say that their decision to trap Esmé was a step down a slippery slope from which there was no return. You may want to stop reading this story right now and imagine that the Baudelaires warned Esmé away from the trap and found some other way of saving Sunny. Don't say you weren't warned, because you were.  
  
They waited quietly behind the arch and heard the footsteps of Esmé approach, then her little scream of delight as she found what she thought were fashionable green cigarettes, then a crashing noise and a louder scream, and then a strange muffled "Mmph! Mmmph!" sound.  
  
Klaus ran out and peered down into the pit.  
  
"We didn't make the pit wide enough," Klaus said. "Her enormous skirt got caught on the sides and pulled up over her head. I'm not sure she can breathe!"  
  
"Oh no!" cried Violet. She and Quigley ran to the edge and looked in too.  
  
"Do you smell smoke?" Quigley asked. "I do."  
  
"The Verdant Flammable Devices!" said Violet. "She picked them up before she fell in. Now they're down there with her. I hope..."  
  
But it was too late to hope. With a sudden roar, the flame-colored dress was engulfed in a mass of genuine scorching flame!  
  
As the muffled screams of Esmé came to their ears, the children realized that they had indeed fought fire with fire. 


	2. Part 2

Part 2 --------  
  
Violet, Klaus, and Quigley stared in horror at the flames engulfing Esmé Squalor and her fashionable flame-imitating dress.  
  
"We've got to do something to help her!" Violet shouted.  
  
"Ice!" said Klaus. "Let's throw in pieces of ice. The ice will melt and extinguish the fire."  
  
All three of them ran desperately to the edge of the icy lake, grabbed rocks and broke loose chunks of ice. They ran back and forth, throwing in the ice and running back for more.  
  
It was no use. The ice melted and the fire hissed a little, but there was too much fiercely-burning material to extinguish. The flames continued, though the screams had stopped.  
  
"I've never read of a dress burning that way," said Klaus. "It's as if it were saturated with highly flammable substances."  
  
"I can't believe this is happening," said Violet. "We killed her." Her stomach heaved violently and she lost the nuts and carrots she had eaten earlier in the day.  
  
"It was an accident," said Quigley, "We didn't mean to."  
  
"That doesn't matter," said Klaus. "I read a lot of law books in Justice Strauss's library, and one thing I remember is that if a person is killed while you are committing some other crime on them, it's murder. Attempted kidnapping is a crime."  
  
"M-maybe she's not dead," said Violet. "Count Olaf has car, and maybe if he rushed her to the nearest hospital..."  
  
The others didn't want to say anything to deny her last hope, but they all secretly knew it would be no use. Besides, the nearest hospital had been burned to the ground several days ago.  
  
"We still have to save Sunny," Klaus finally said. "We don't have a hostage, but maybe we could bluff Count Olaf... tell him where to find Esmé in exchange for Sunny."  
  
"That wouldn't work," said Quigley. "He'd see in our eyes that something was wrong."  
  
"Not if he couldn't see our eyes at all," said Violet. She picked up the masks the Snow Scouts had given them to ward off snow gnats. "And we can pretend to be Volunteers to throw him off even more."  
  
Using the climbing forks and the candelabra ice tester, the Baudelaires and Quigley ascended the physical slippery slope. None of them were in a mood for talking. It was all they could do to try to put the horrible thing that had happened out of their minds. They couldn't, of course.  
  
Nor could they spare a thought for taking the sled up with them, which might have made a useful emergency escape vehicle. Just as I didn't think of taking the bottle of baby oil which would have helped me immensely in escaping the Boojum Snark.  
  
As they pulled themselves over the edge, they found themselves mask-to-face with Count Olaf, standing near his long, back automobile with his two accomplices: the man with a beard but no hair, and the woman with hair and no beard.  
  
"Who goes there?" Count Olaf demanded.  
  
"We were expecting Esmé to come back, not three masked midgets," said the man with a beard but no hair.  
  
"We're volunteers!" announced Quigley in what he hoped was a bold voice.  
  
"Volunteers?" said the woman with hair but no beard. Olaf and the other two gave them a confused frown, half scared and half scornful. The hook-handed man, the white-faced women, and the three ex-carnival-freaks came up to see what was causing their boss to fall silent.  
  
"We built a trap to capture your girlfriend, Olaf," Violet said. "If you want to see the woman you love again, hand over the child you have taken prisoner." She shuddered inwardly at the awful lie she had just told, or at least implied.  
  
"We're here for Sunny Baudelaire," Klaus said, "And we're not leaving without her."  
  
Count Olaf peered at them with his shiny, shiny eyes. "You've misjudged me, volunteers, if you think I love anyone but myself. Esmé Squalor has a nice body, true. But I'm getting tired of her stupidity and especially of her constant yammering about what's in and what's out. Now that she's gotten herself taken hostage, it's time I took advantage of the secret feature built into the Voluminous Flame Dress that my comrades here gave me to give to her."  
  
"Hear, hear," said the man with a beard but no hair. "Fire can solve any problem."  
  
Olaf pulled a black box with a red button out of his pocket. "At the touch of this button, the secret radio-controlled lighter sewn into the lining of the Voluminous Flame Dress will ignite the highly flammable substances that saturate the dress, and your hostage will be a hot-dog instead."  
  
He pressed the button. The carney recruits screamed, the hook-handed man shuddered, and one of the white-faced women gasped out "Monster!" The three children remained silent. They knew there was nothing Count Olaf could do to Esmé that they hadn't already done to her themselves.  
  
"You're very cold-blooded volunteers," said Olaf. "Aren't you going to scream and call me a monster, too? You ought to be on our side. But since you aren't, and you're hopelessly outnumbered, what's to prevent us from throwing you off the cliff and keeping the child for ourselves?"  
  
Violet had been using the time Olaf was being dramatic with the button to think furiously.  
  
"You will give us Sunny," she said, "Because we know where the sugar bowl is." 


	3. Part 3

Part 3  
  
Count Olaf glared at the three companions. "Where is the sugar bowl?" he hissed. "Give it to me!"  
  
Violet shook her head. "Not until you give us Sunny Baudelaire."  
  
"Never!" said Olaf. "Without that brat I'll never get the Baudelaire fortune. Give me the sugar bowl now, or I'll throw you off the mountain!"  
  
"If you do, you'll never know where the sugar bowl is," said Klaus.  
  
"I can't let the baby go," said Olaf. "Stealing the Baudelaire fortune is the greater good." No one spoke up to argue with him, because no one else in the troupe but Esmé had known the true importance of the sugar bowl.  
  
"I guess I'll just have to have my associates throw you off the cliff one by one and see if that gets you to talk," sneered Olaf. He gestured to the hook-handed man, the white-faced women, and the three ex-carnival freaks. "Go on, get them!"  
  
"Not me," said the hook-handed man. "After what you did to Esmé, how can I trust I'll get what's coming to me?"  
  
"Oh you will, count on it," said Olaf.  
  
"We quit too," said one of the white-faced women. The other nodded. "For a while it was fun to fight fire with fire, but we've seen enough flames to last our whole lives. What you did to your girlfriend was despicable, Olaf."  
  
"You will obey me!" screamed Olaf. "You, you new employees, throw all the deserters off the cliff this instant!"  
  
"No," said Colette. "I thought what happened at the carnival to Madam Lulu and your man with the long nose was an accident, But now I see you don't care about your people at all. I'm going back to being a freak. Come on, Kevin and Hugo."  
  
"Yes," said Kevin. "I'd rather be laughed at for my two equally-strong hands than work for a man who would booby-trap dresses."  
  
"What were you saying about us being outnumbered?" Violet asked Olaf.  
  
Suddenly, there was a series of shrill whistles blasts and the air was swarming with eagles. The eagles grabbed the hook-handed man, the white-faced women, Colette, Kevin, and Hugo by the shoulders and bore them away screaming. (I haven't been able to find out exactly what happened to them after that, but I fear the worst.)  
  
Violet, Klaus, and Quigley saw that the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard had pulled out shiny silver whistles which they were using to command the eagles.  
  
"Lost control of your subordinates, Olaf?" said the man with a beard but no hair. "I'm disappointed in you. Never mind, we are about to recruit a whole new batch."  
  
"We instructed our eagle slaves to spare you, volunteers, because we still want that sugar bowl and so that you could see our triumph," said the woman with hair but no beard. "When the schism occurred, you may have won the carrier crows and the trained reptiles..."  
  
"Not anymore," Count Olaf said, "All the reptiles except one --"  
  
"Don't interrupt, Olaf. You may have the carrier crows, but we have the two most powerful mammals in the world to do our bidding -- the lions and the eagles!"  
  
"Eagles aren't mammals, they're birds!" Klaus cried.  
  
"They're slaves!" said the man with a beard but no hair, cracking a whip at the eagles.  
  
"On my signal, they will lift the the net we have placed here and carry off a group of young people who think they are here to celebrate False Spring," the woman said.  
  
"The Snow Scouts," gasped Violet.  
  
"They'll be offered the glorious chance to join us," said the man in his hoarse voice.  
  
"They won't!" Klaus said.  
  
"They'll either be recruited or be our prisoners," said the woman in her deep voice. "But we'll burn down every one of their parent's homes in either case."  
  
Even Count Olaf looked uneasy at this. "The main reason we're doing this is to get our hands on all those fortunes: the Spats fortune, the Winnipeg fortune, and the Kornbluth fortune..."  
  
"And because we looove to burn things up," said the woman.  
  
"We're overriding Olaf's decision, volunteers," the man interrupted. "Once you tell us where the sugar bowl is you can leave and take your baby friend with you. But wouldn't you rather join us? We could use more cold-blooded people like you."  
  
"No thanks," Quigley said. "We're not interested."  
  
"It doesn't matter," said the woman with hair but no beard. "Here come our new recruits!"  
  
The Snow Scouts were arriving, marching in two neat rows. 


	4. Part 4

Part 4  
  
All the Snow Scouts were now unmasked, apparently because they realized there were no snow gnats in this part of Mortmain Mountains. At the head of one line was Uncle Bruce, who looked vaguely familiar to Violet and Klaus, though there were too worried about the villainous recruitment scheme to pay much attention. Carmelita Spats was at the head of the other line with a small crown on her head.  
  
"What are all you cakesniffers doing here?" she demanded. "I'm the False Spring Queen, and I order you to go away!"  
  
"Now now, Carmelita," Bruce said. I'm sure these people are here to help celebrate your special day. Let's be accommodating, basic, calm, darling,..."  
  
Violet interrupted the chanting of the pledge. "Bruce, these people are here to kidnap the Snow Scouts, not help you celebrate."  
  
"It's a trap," Klaus said, "Get out of here as fast as you can!"  
  
"Pay no attention to those masked fools," said Olaf. "The mountain air has gone to their heads. Just take a few steps closer and we'll all join in a special celebration."  
  
"Please listen to us!" Klaus said, "You're in terrible danger."  
  
Carmelita glared at them and asked, "Why should I listen to cakesniffing strangers like you? You're so stupid you still have your masks on when there aren't any snow gnats around."  
  
The Baudelaires realized they were unlikely to convince anyone they were telling the truth while their faces were covered. They didn't want to sacrifice their disguise, but they couldn't help it if they wanted to save the Snow Scouts. All three children took off their masks.  
  
Count Olaf's mouth dropped open, "The two older orphans? You're dead! You perished in the caravan. And you, you're one of those twins who died a long time ago."  
  
"I'm a triplet, not a twin," said Quigley, "and I'm not dead."  
  
"And you're not a volunteer," Olaf sneered. "None of you are members of V.F.D. You're just a bunch of orphan brats."  
  
"Then we don't need the stupid baby any longer," said the deep-voiced woman with hair but no beard. She blew her whistle and the eagles lifted her to the side of the car. "The baby has been napping in this casserole dish the whole time, and now I'll throw her off the mountain!"  
  
"Nooo!" cried Violet and Klaus. They rushed toward the woman, but the eagles lifted her high above their heads. She tossed the casserole dish towards the cliff. As it turned in the air it came open, and a large eggplant fell with a "plop!" beside the car.  
  
"We've been tricked! Where's the baby?" shouted the woman in surprise.  
  
"I'm not a baby," said Sunny, emerging from behind the punctured tire where she had been hiding.  
  
"Look at what they just tried to do!" Violet called to the Snow Scouts. "Now can't you see they are terrible villains out to do you harm?"  
  
"You look pretty villainous yourselves, you guilty-faced cakesniffers!" said Carmelita Spats. "You're just trying to ruin my special day!"  
  
Violet, Klaus, and Quigley looked at each other. It was true. The remorse of killing Esmé Squalor had made their faces drawn and guilty-looking. There was no way they could convince the Snow Scouts now.  
  
Carmelita grabbed the Springpole and jammed it into the very edge of Mount Fraught. "I crown myself False Spring Queen!" There was a shattering sound and an enormous crack split its way down the waterfall.  
  
"What are you looking at?" demanded Carmelita. "You're supposed to be doing a dance in my honor."  
  
"Forward march, Snow Scouts," said Bruce. Let's recite the Snow Scout Alphabet pledge as we dance around the Springpole."  
  
"Snow Scouts," said the Snow Scouts, "are accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantined, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone..."  
  
By the time they got to "xylophone" they had all marched onto the net. The villainous man and woman blew their whistles and the eagles dove to the ground, picking up the net and capturing everyone standing on it. The only ones who escaped recruitment -- other than the Baudelaires and Quigley of course -- was Carmelita Spats, standing next to Count Olaf.  
  
"I've beaten you again, Bruce," called Count Olaf up to the net. "I tricked you out of a reptile collection I needed for my own use, and now I've tricked you out of your collection of children!"  
  
The eagles began flying away, dragging the net. Eagles on the shoulders of the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair and no beard lifted them both into the air.  
  
"You get the sugar bowl from those orphan brats, Olaf," said the woman with hair and no beard, "and we'll meet at the last safe place! We'll have changed disguises by then, just to be careful. I'll have the beard and she'll have the hair."  
  
"With these eagles," the sinister man with a beard and no hair said, "We can finally catch up the the self-sustaining hot-air balloon and destroy those volunteers!"  
  
The Baudelaires gasped and looked at Quigley, thinking about their friends Duncan, Isadora, and Hector being in danger.  
  
As the eagles bore the sinister couple away, they both called out "We'll fight fire with fire!"  
  
Olaf turned toward the Baudelaires. "I only need one of you to learn where the sugar bowl is and get my hands on the fortune. Which one should it be?"  
  
"Keep Violet, because she has the longest hair to pull," suggested Carmelita.  
  
"An excellent idea," Count Olaf said. "I'd forgotten what an adorable little girl you are. Why don't you join me?"  
  
"Join you?" Carmelita asked.  
  
"Yes, I seem to be short a theater troupe willing to do villainous drudge-work for me. Why not push all the orphans off the cliff but one, and then come with me to a nice hotel?"  
  
Had Esmé been there to flatter Carmelita and promise her nice outfits, things might have been different. But Olaf had no idea how to talk to a spoiled little girl.  
  
"I don't like you," Carmelita said. "You're ugly and you stink!"  
  
Count Olaf's eyes glittered with rage. "I'll have you know I'm extremely handsome, and I washed my face today especially to welcome the new recruits."  
  
"You're a dirty, ugly cakesniffer!"  
  
"Why, you little...!" yelled Olaf, losing his temper and grabbing at Carmelita. She ran out of reach, towards the Springpole. Olaf charged at her, but suddenly the eggplant rolled under his feet. He tripped, slipped on the ice, and went straight over the cliff! The fall broke several ribs and both of his legs, but he might have survived if he hadn't skidded across the frozen lake and straight into the pit, where the Voluminous Fire Dress had still not stopped blazing.  
  
"How did the eggplant get out there?" asked Violet.  
  
"Babganoush!" Sunny cried. She licked a little eggplant juice from her fingers.  
  
Carmelita looked at them with disgust. "The Daily Punctilio said that the Baudelaires are cakesniffing murderers, and now I've seen it myself!"  
  
"Those stories were wrong!" said Klaus. "We never killed any..." He trailed off, realizing that now the stories were no longer wrong.  
  
"Hah!" said Carmelita, running for the trail. "I'm going to tell them about this new murder. I'll get my picture in the paper and be famous!"  
  
The others didn't have the heart to try to stop her. I'm sorry to tell you that Carmelita got safely back to civilization and got her picture in the Daily Punctilio with the headline, "Adorable Girl Escapes Killer Baudelaires!"  
  
"Now Sunny has blood on her hands, too," said Quigley. "I'm afraid you've all failed V.F.D. training. K will be very disappointed. So will your Uncle Lemony."  
  
"Kay? That's our mother's name," said Violet.  
  
"I said 'K', not 'Kay'," Quigley said. "But that's who I'm talking about."  
  
"Wait a second," said Klaus. "You're talking about our mother? And you said she will be disappointed? You mean she's alive, and you knew it all along?"  
  
"I haven't been entirely honest with you," said Quigley. "I'm a member of the V.F.D. and I was up here at headquarters with your mother when it was burned down. I saved the sugar bowl and preserved the poem stanza so that you could read the Verbal Fridge Dialog. Later I went down and joined the Snow Scouts so I could help you if you came that way."  
  
"But where is our mother?" cried Violet.  
  
"Where?" echoed Sunny.  
  
"There's another secret passage the villains didn't know about," Quigley said. He walked to a large rock beside the trail and knocked on it.  
  
"You can come out now, Mrs. Baudelaire," Quigley said. 


	5. Part 5

Part 5  
  
The concealed door in the rock opened, and Kay Baudelaire rushed out to meet her children.  
  
"Mother! Mother!" they all cried, hugging her.  
  
"Oh how we missed you. How did you..." started Violet.  
  
"What happened..." started Klaus.  
  
"Why?" asked Sunny.  
  
Kay held up a hand. "Just a moment, darlings. I wasn't supposed to show myself unless something went wrong. Quigley, what was it?"  
  
"They fought fire with fire," said Quigley. "Olaf and Esmé are dead."  
  
Kay sighed. "Oh dear."  
  
Violet felt a horrible hollow space deep in her stomach. "You weren't... you weren't going to show yourself? What do you mean?"  
  
"It's Volunteer Fearlessness Development, sweetheart. V.F.D. recruits are trained and tested by exposing them to dangerous situations they have to get through on their own," said Kay.  
  
"V.F.D. agents monitor your progress," said Quigley, "but they aren't supposed to reveal their identity as agents or give direct help unless you ask for it. I made a couple of slips that nearly gave me away. I said that Bruce had caused the V.F.D. enough trouble without learning another of our secrets. And I mentioned that your telegram never arrived. I realized later I couldn't have gotten that from Jacques' notes, because Jacques was dead by then."  
  
"But Count Olaf said you weren't in the V.F.D.," said Violet.  
  
"He didn't know," said Quigley. "All of us triplets were recruited after the fire that killed my father and mother."  
  
"Your mother, Beatrice Quagmire, was a great V.F.D. agent, and much loved by my brother," said Kay. "It's good that you are following in her footsteps."  
  
"Isadora? Duncan?" asked Sunny, meaning, "Isadora and Duncan were in on the whole thing, too? They lied to us?"  
  
"Yes, everywhere you went the V.F.D. had agents -- at Prufrock they were Isadora, Duncan, and the school librarian," said Kay. "Mr. Poe was easily manipulated into sending you where we wanted. It got harder to track you when you went out on your own, but we managed."  
  
Klaus, almost choking on the words, said, "So all we went through, the grief and the pain, the dangers from villains and leeches and lions, the misery at the Lucky Smells Mill and the Prufrock Preparatory School and the Heimlich Hospital and the Caligari Carnival was all just a TEST? We could have died!"  
  
"Yargh!" cried Sunny, which meant "I am extremely upset at this development."  
  
"Duncan, Isadora, and myself went through hardships for training, too," said Quigley. "I had to hide three days inside a snowman while we waited for your Uncle Monty to respond to a message -- he never did. And Isadora and Duncan had to spend months at Prufrock listening to Principal Nero's horrible violin playing."  
  
"But nothing like what we went through," said Violet.  
  
"That's because you showed such talent," said Kay. "Your inventing skills, and Klaus' research ability, and Sunny's talent for biting and language. You had to be tested harder than the rest. To whom much is given, much is required."  
  
"Iphigenia!" said Sunny, which meant something like, "I feel like we're been sacrificed to a cause, which is a horrible thing for a parent to do to a child."  
  
"I know it must seem that way to you, Sunny," said Kay. "But in these hard times when there's a schism in the V.F.D. we have to have strong, fearless agents."  
  
Quigley said, "Our motto, 'The world is quiet here' doesn't just mean the quiet of a library. It means the quiet of the grave. We're willing to die for our cause. Like my mother and your father did. But we never murder."  
  
"You let us become murderers," said Violet. "All because of your stupid secret society."  
  
"I'll get you a good lawyer, darlings," said Kay.  
  
"As far as I'm concerned, your side of the V.F.D is as bad as the other!" said Klaus.  
  
"It's for the greater good," said Kay.  
  
"You say that, too?" cried Violet. "I hate you! I hate you!" In a blind rage, she pushed her mother away. Unfortunately, Violet had forgotten that they were standing on the precipice of the slippery slope. My sister fell, taking a different path than the late Count Olaf. She didn't skid across the ice. Instead she hit a half-submerged rock and lay still.  
  
"MOTHERRR!" cried Sunny and Klaus.  
  
"No! Oh no! Not Mother too!" Violet sobbed. "I didn't mean to."  
  
"I know," said Quigley, putting an arm around her. "Let's go."  
  
"Get away from me, Quigley!" Violet snapped. "You and your lies and tests! You were the one who suggested the trap in the first place. Get out of here right now before you're next. I'm feeling so crazy I don't know what I might do. I can't believe I let you kiss me."  
  
Klaus glowered and made fists. Sunny bared her four sharp teeth. Quigley dashed for the rock passage, pulled the door shut from inside, and locked it.  
  
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked at each other.  
  
"What do we do now?" asked Klaus. "We were on the run as killers before but we had the hope of clearing our name. Now we don't."  
  
"We can't trust either side of the V.F.D.," said Violet. "I'll fix the flat tire and we'll take Olaf's car. It has food, supplies, and disguises. We'll take the tents, too. If Olaf and his troupe could live by their wits, so can we."  
  
"Autoknow?" said Sunny, meaning "Do you know how to drive?"  
  
"I'll figure it out," said Violet.  
  
-------------  
  
Here my tale of the Baudelaires must come to an end. It has been my sad duty to report the unfortunate adventures of these children in order that our scattered faction of the V.F.D. might evaluate their progress in Volunteer Fearlessness Development. I included plenty of caveats (which here means statements like "please do not read these miserable tales") so that the average reader would not get into them and learn our secrets. I have no heart to record the further slide of the Baudelaire orphans down the slippery slope into a life of crime.  
  
And yet, I can't help but wonder if the Baudelaires were right in saying our side of the V.F.D. is as bad as the other. We've become quite ruthless (which here means "hard-hearted enough to put innocent children through a series of unfortunate events.") We ourselves may be on a slippery slope. One step leads to another, from noble causes to necessary evils to moral uncertainty to villainy to conspiracies to an overall feeling of doom.  
  
For now, I will devote my efforts to recovering the sugar bowl and clearing my name. Then I will resign from the organization that has cost the lives of my brother Jacques, my sister Kay, and my beloved Beatrice.  
  
With all due respect (which here means "none"),  
  
Lemony Snicket 


End file.
